Saturday, 13 December 2008

UN official calls Israel "apartheid" state

President of UN General Assembly urges Israel to be recognized as an apartheid state

The president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, has referred to Israel as an apartheid state.

Phyllis Bennis analyses the significance of this identification as compared to South African apartheid and the popular resistance struggles worldwide that helped end it.

Isreali apartheid is built into a system of roads walls, and fences which create segregation of Palestinians and Jews both inside the West Bank and between the West Bank and Israel.

Gazan Palestinians are separated from Israel and West Bank Palestinians by the siege imposed by Israel after the election of Hamas.

Bennis analyses the validity of the term "apartheid" in the case of Israel and the proposed peace plan many Arab states have presented as a possible solution.

Phyllis Bennis is a senior analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy US Power. Her newest book is Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.